LIHBA STATEMENT ON SUPREME COURT RULING IN STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSION, INC.  v. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

For immediate release: July 1, 2023

Contact: Lihbacontact@gmail.com

The Executive Board of the Long Island Hispanic Bar Association (LIHBA) strongly denounces the United States Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  President and Fellows of Harvard College which ended the use of affirmative action in higher education. Challengers in the case targeted Harvard and the University of North Carolina, arguing that their admissions programs which employed affirmative action violated equal protection principles, dashed the promise of a colorblind society and discriminated against Asian Americans. They asked the court to overturn established precedent arguing that higher education should explore and further develop race-neutral alternatives to achieve diversity.

In fact, as many education experts have already pointed out since the decision came out today, the decision will all but ensure that elite institutions become whiter and less Black and Latino. The Court’s decision, written by Justice John Roberts with strong dissents read from the bench by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, is a further example of the Court ignoring both well-established precedent and the racial reality of living in the United States as a person of color.

The decision does nothing to wipe out the well-known practice of favoring legacy admissions for students who have a parent or sibling that attended the university or to eliminate the less-public practice of taking substantial donations to endow buildings or scholarships as another way of getting entry.

By ending affirmative action, the Court also usurps the authority of universities and colleges from making admission determinations based on a desire to create a diverse campus experience for their students.

For centuries, these institutions employed racist admission practices predominantly to keep out Black applicants; later decades saw racist admission practices to keep out Latinos and women as well.  Affirmative action was not a cure-all to racial imbalance at places of higher learning, but it was a step in the right direction, and it was effective in giving entry to applicants who would have otherwise been rejected even though just as qualified. For example, women made significant gains under affirmative action. In the field of law, women used to be only 3% of the legal profession before affirmative action. After its implementation, the percentage of women lawyers quickly rose to 30% and now, in many law schools, women make up over 50% of students.

By taking away the right of a university or college to consider race in its admissions practice, SCOTUS ignores the reality that without such a system in place, these institutions may very well return to become guarded bastions for the privileged.

LIHBA also denounces the Court’s decision in 303 Creative LLC v Elenis where the Court held that a business may refuse service to same-sex couples, under the First Amendment.  Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor authored the dissent stating “Time and again businesses and other commercial entities have claimed a constitutional right to discriminate and time and again this court has courageously stood up to those claims. Until today. Today, this court shrinks.”